Primark Rocks the House in Fall Denim Wars

Plus: Uma Thurman meets Pink Pantheress and more great work from Europe

Just in time to leave its own mark on the fall denim wars, Primark in the U.K. launches its first TV campaign with help from VCCP. Directed by Nadia Marquard Otzen and choreographed by Ryan Heffington, “In Denim We Can” is set to the Slits’ 1979 cover of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” This lends hip nostalgic energy to otherwise modern visual takes on how you can wear what is, and always will be, a textile that feels best old (even when it’s new).

In spirit, the work feels closer to Gap’s “Better in Denim” than American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney thing. The latter caught heat for feeling like a eugenicist dog whistle in the culturally heated U.S. atmosphere. And however you might feel about that, the pound-for-pound contributions of Primark, Gap and Levi’s to this symbolic conversation leave people with sufficient choice to make whatever statements they want with what they choose to buy.

That’s not to say this year’s debate on Sweeney and Eagle has no meaning. Branding is power. It says things that can’t be ignored nor divorced from the historical context in which they occur. The history of jeans is woven into American history, culture and identity. American Eagle knows this. Primark does, too. The brand subtly interacts with that history in this work, as do its competitors.

For our part, we’re glad that “blue” isn’t the only option commercial culture presents for “great jeans” (or genes). Because once upon a time, not that long ago, it was. AE knew that, too. Thanks for not sucking, Primark.

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In “The Move-In,” Rosa Paris’ latest work for France’s Foundation for Housing, a house softly becomes a home. But there’s a twist! (We won’t spoil it.) The Foundation promotes access to “dignified, decent living conditions for all.” The stakes of this are evident in the quiet storytelling, which depicts a single mother: 40.5 percent of single-parent households in France are under the poverty line (compared to 15.4 percent of two-parent families); 82 percent of single-parent homes are led by moms.

But this story is less about the mother than the proud figure who punctuates almost every scene. “The Move-In” is actually about the importance of legacy giving: Just 9 percent of people over 50 have considered offering some aspect of their legacy to a charity. What we love about this work is its suggestion that you can go on being part of a community, and even a family, long after you die.

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“What Do I Wear?”—created by W+K Amsterdam for online retailer Zalando—finds Uma Thurman wandering a farmer’s market packed with sartorially “inspiring” reflections of herself. Rapper Pink Pantheress, whose voice punctuates the background, is in here too, smiling like a spiritual avatar of all those doubles as Uma saves a cute coat she managed to find on Zalando.

This is a tiny, weird piece of work. We like how Pantheress and Uma meet toward the end almost as reflections of the same person at different points in time. The uncanny valley aspect of the other doubles feels in sync with our current attempt to grapple with AI: Who’s using it, for visuals or copy? Who’s not? What can be gleaned for inspiration and learning, and what’s just more repetition in the void?

This game of trying to suss the odd ones out, and draw from uniformity while differentiating ourselves, feels almost like a trick of the light. And it feels useful to have Uma herself at the center of this visual conversation. Time has softened her since the Kill Bill days, which is pretty much the last time most people have seen her. The farmer’s market also creates a funny mental contrast to all that slicing and dicing with the samurai sword. Uma’s gone on with her life. But this seemingly abrupt update to the image we have of her, 22 years younger now, feels like a glitch.